It
becomes obvious that my main focus had been canoe slalom for the last
decades. I've been paddling for more than 20 years now and amazingly I
still love it.
The whole thing started in a paddling family. Both my parents had been
paddling and did quite a lot of touring, than my older brother decided
to look for something more exciting and ended up doing canoe slalom. I
followed a few years later and enjoyed it straight from the beginning.
We had an awesome group in our club. With a number of guys at a
different age made training heaps of fun and gave me, as the youngest,
the opportunity to learn from the older guys and challenge them where
ever possible.

Being
a junior I raced my frist international races and I was already successful.
I had a tough transition into the senior team, because at that time a
number of awesome paddler were around like Oliver Fix, Thomas Becker and
Jochen Lettmann. Nevertheless I managed to go ahead and joined the
national team in 1996 the first time. Having ups and downs I faced my
worst time in 1999 where I dislocated my shoulder just a couple of weeks
before the World Championships. But I mastered this as well and came
back stronger than before, qualified for the Olympic Games in Sydney
2000. After an awesome season I went to the Olympics and won the race
with an outstanding performance. From then my life began to change. Even
though I finished my studying a year and a half later, after that I
started to work and went to another Olympic Games in Athens were I
became 5th.

At
the end of the 2004 season I decided to retire and do something what I
ever wanted to do. Me and my wife went to Australia for a bit more then
a year where I studied at Sydney Uni
(Master of Engineering Studies), she volunteered for the Canoeing Worlds
in 2005 and we both had a great time.